• Directed by Paul Verhoeven
• Written by Andrew W. Marlowe
• Starring
  • Elizabeth Shue
  • Kevin Bacon
  • Josh Brolin
  • Kim Dickens
  • Greg Grunberg

This movie was inevitable. Recent years have seen a spate of classics-mining, with both Dracula and Frankenstein getting a spruce-up. The Time Machine will be coming out soon, and heaven help the souls of those who decided to completely shit upon this classic (I’ve read the synopsis, folks; it gave me hives). At least Paul Verhoeven didn’t claim that this was “H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.” Because it ain’t.

Kevin Bacon as Road Rash Man.

What it is, is an amalgam of just about every invisible man movie ever made, held together with some really nice eye candy. In other words, it probably nails the coffin shut on invisible man movies forever.

Our titular character is one Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon), a wunderkind scientist working on the eternal question of invisibility for — who else? — the Pentagon. Such a high level project necessitates an overly cool lab, hidden well beneath a nondescript warehouse, as well as a whole new level of psychobabble: This project aims to “phase shift” the subject using radioactive isotopes, quantum signatures, and a whole bunch of other nifty words culled from a week’s worth of Next Generation reruns. Actually, “aimed” would be a better term; the project has so far churned out an invisible gorilla, an invisible puppy, and presumably a sizeable unseen menagerie. It’s the re-visibilizing that’s turned out to be the problem.

Kevin Bacon as the Anatomically Correct Invisible Man.

With the help of his fearless crew, which includes former galpal Linda (Elizabeth Shue), as well as her current hush-hush beau Matt (Josh Brolin), Sebastian finally gets the correct isotopy-combination, and brings a gorilla back to visibility (including bone, which wouldn’t absorb the injection so quickly, and hair, which just plain wouldn’t absorb it). But given that Sebastian is a selfish, self-obsessed bastard with delusions of grandeur, he doesn’t tell his Pentagon keepers. Why? Because they may want to take the project away from him, and dammit, it’s his baby. And besides, he wants to be the first human.

So yup, he undergoes the treatment, and vanishes on-screen in some really cool computer graphics (though why his skin would disappear first is beyond me). And yes, everything’s really cool as they perform tests on him. But did I mention that he’s a bastard? Which means that, while Sarah the vet (Kim Dickens) is asleep at her desk during the night shift, he takes the occasion to unbutton her top and demonstrate why these women really should wear bras (especially the kind that hooks in the back).

Kevin Bacon as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Perhaps his assholeness wouldn’t have had much time to blossom, except that his planned three-day stint as the invisible guinea pig sort of extends itself; the serum that worked on the gorilla doesn’t work on him. Locked in the bunker, he starts going stir-crazy — and when he finally lets himself out, he begins to realize the possibilities; he is, after all, invisible.

Many reviewers have derided this movie for its supposed mysogyny; one took his case to almost hysterical extremes, effectively branding Verhoeven as the most woman-hating son-of-a-bitch in Hollywood and trying to make any male who didn’t absolutely revile the movie feel like a candidate for aversion therapy and possible shock treatment. I mean, this guy went so far as to misremember or (apparently) misinterpret the intent of several scenes to support his thesis. So let me make it pretty simple for him and people like him:

Kevin Bacon as the Amazing Silly Putty Man.

Sebastian is a shit. He started out a shit, and his invisibility only makes him more of a shit. He’s the bad guy, for crying out loud! The point of the movie is to examine (however facilely) what happens to a man without any real ethics when he is removed from the consequence of his actions. The title refers not only to the latex mask he wears which leaves his eyes and mouth as gaping holes, but the fact that he has no internalized moral code; he’s ethically hollow. (Yes, Paul, we get it. Thanks.)

Now, please don’t think that I’m defending this as a good movie, but I think if you’re going to condemn a movie, you ought to focus on its worst faults.

I’m even willing to forego a discussion of the lapses in the laws of physics which characterize the last twenty minutes (after all, we’re watching a movie about an invisible man — where, exactly, did this movie lose its credibility with you?), and gloss over the incredible stupidity of the nicer characters in roughly that same time span (Hmm, Linda, maybe if you’d thought of that emergency hatch in the security-locked elevator before three of your co-workers succumbed to your ex-boyfriend’s nastiness), and maybe a counterintuitive bit of laboratory equipment (do centrifuges really need to be equipped with a countdown timer? And why does the sprinkler system not react to the fire in the lab until Linda puts an open flame right up to it?).

Kevin Bacon as the Human Marshmallow.

No, the real problem here is that it’s so damnably predictable. If you’ve ever seen any of the invisible man movies (especially, heaven help us, The Invisible Maniac), you can see everything coming from miles away. And even if you aren’t familiar with that particular subgenre, the script is kind enough to telegraph major plot points well in advance. When we first meet Sebastian, he watches the beautiful woman across the street partially undress before pulling the shades; gee, do you think he’ll come back for her once he’s invisible? (The neighbor, by the way, is played by Rhona Mitra, last seen around here in Beowulf, and also the original model for the character of Lara Croft; and her offscreen rape is one of the more repugnant features of this movie.) Linda cautions Matt that Sebastian doesn’t know about their relationship and that they’d better be careful how they let him know; gee, do you think that his accidental discovery of their escapades will finally send him around the bend? The lab is only accessable by a single security-laden elevator; gee, do you think someone (or a whole passel of someones) is going to get trapped below? (The screenplay is by one Andrew W. Marlowe, also the scribe of Air Force One and End of Days — so you can see that fresh, innovative scripts are really not in his career plan.)

Bottom line is that Hollow Man adds nothing to the invisibility subgenre except the admittedly state-of-the-art special effects, which finally dispense with the need for bluescreen hoods and piano wire. Too bad such effects weren’t employed in the service of a more innovative story.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7 (plus 1 rat and 1 dog)
• breasts: 3
• explosions: 3
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
  • Margot Rose (Mrs. Kramer) played “Eline” in the TNG episode “The Inner Light” and “Rinn” in the DS9 episode “Hard Time”
  • Jimmie F. Skaggs (the wino) was “Glinn Boheeka” in the DS9 episode “The Wire”
  • J. Patrick McCormack (General Caster) played “Admiral Bennett” in the DS9 episode “Doctor Bashir, I Presume,” and “Prax” in the Voyager episode “Counterpoint”